I’ve always hated listening to old dudes talkin’ about how great things used to be compared to how they are now. “Back in the day we learned to do real tricks like frontside grinds, with style! We weren’t auditioning for the circus.” I’ll make an exception for Grosso whose old guy perspective is crazy entertaining and rife with jewels of wisdom, but other than that, you can save it. The truth is that most of these codgers were never that gnarly, didn’t do airs as high as they thought they did, had weak handlplants etc. Okay, maybe they did good frontside grinds but so does everyone (except me).


Which brings me to my point. I’m old, but I’m glad to be able to look back without the rose colored glasses worn by a lot of my old peers. Instead, I remember how it really used to be, and I can say without hesitation that we are living in the greatest time ever to be a skateboarder. Here are just few reasons why. A lot of the time there was nothing to skate unless you built it. And most of the time what was being built was garbage. Vert was cool in the 80s, and do you know how hard it is to build a good vert ramp? Nearly impossible. There were always horror stories of giant splinters going through people’s feet from kneesliding on old wood, bodies getting sliced open by rogue screws that popped up after a rain, ramps getting torn down before they were even finished due to ordinance violations, noise complaints from neighbors, etc. Sure backyard vert ramps were fun while they lasted, but they almost NEVER lasted long.


Street skating wasn’t much better, the cops were even less stoked on us then than they are now. In fact, skaters were all thought to be drug-addled hooligans intent on causing trouble and vandalizing property. On top of that there was no social media or Internet to help find spots, nobody was dropping any pins, and if mom wasn’t driving there was no way to get downtown, etc. That last part is still probably true if you don’t have a car, but I’m old enough to get around now thankfully.


Videos used to come out a few times a year starting in 1985. Magazines were thin, there were only two of them for the better part of the decade, and 90% of coverage focused on California. If you lived anywhere else you felt like you were on the moon. Now you CAN live on the moon and remain entirely in the mix. Barcelona? Shanghai? Same as So-Cal bro.

Back in the day the girls you would have wanted to hang out with didn’t want to hang out with you because you were a skater. Skating was cool to us, and only us, everyone else thought of it in the same way we think of rollerbladers and razor scooterers. Totally whack.


There are insanely great free to skate public skateparks in Everywhere and Anytown USA. In the late eighties there were literally none.


For the most part skaters used to be done skating at 21. The idea that you could be a skater for life was just that, an idea. No one had done it yet. Most of the pros dropped out of the scene and were never heard from again. It was kind of terrifying thinking that you’d have to do the same. Now we all know better. Let’s shoot for 100!

In 1992 you were a kook if you weren’t wearing size 44 Blind jeans that were cut off and fraying above the ankle, a XXXL burnt orange T-shirt, and riding 38mm wheels. Today you can do your own thing, except maybe skate in the 1992 clown costume.

In the mid 1980s a complete would cost you at least $120. They have not gone up in price in 30 years. Good for you.


Now you can create your own skate career if that’s what you’re going for. The guys that run the industry don’t like what you do? So what! Make a skate career outside of the industry and show those clowns.

Skating is on TV. It’s in movies. Even if you don’t care about either of these, it’s also true that the more “mainstream” appeal it has, the more parks get built, etc.

Right now skateboarding is more entertaining than it’s ever been. There’s the Mega Ramps, The Tim O’Connor Show, Welcome, The Berrics, Powell Re-issues, Tampa Am, Bronze 56K, Guy and Daewon on Instagram, Joey Brezinski hyping burritos and living on two wheels, the Xgames, The Pool Party, Dylan Rieder, Chinese pros you’ve never heard of, Go Skateboarding Day, Tony Hawk, skate plazas, Asher Bradshaw, That Skate Ninja guy, and on and on and on and on. THIS is the best era in skateboarding. No matter how much Ben Raybourn might want to take a time machine back to the 80s, he’s one of the reasons that in the future this decade might be looked back on as the greatest ever. Let me put it this way, if you’re complaining about skateboarding right now, you’re totally blowing it. Comments? Thoughts? Concerns? I’d like to hear them.


-Paul Zitzer